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Monday, 23 February 2009

From a scientific point of view, this is about as wrong as you can be.

The journal Science last week had a story that on the surface looks like a minor spat between scientists but in reality has several unfortunate consequences. According to Science, an Israeli company (Nemesysco) is selling a device using Layered Voice Analysis (LVA), which they say can analyse voices to help determine whether the speaker is possibly being deceitful. They have a patent on the technique and have published some papers on the method of analysis. But they also claim that their device implements more than they have published because they think they have been ripped off by publishing too much in the past.

Enter Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda, two researchers in phonetics in Sweden, who have studied this device and came to the conclusion that it was not all it was cracked up to be, reporting their results in December 2007 in the peer reviewed publication The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law under the inflammatory title of Charlatanry in forensic speech science: A problem to be taken seriously. A founder of Nemesysco, Amir Liberman, took exception to what he described as a personal attack and asked his lawyers to contact the journal, who, being a small bi-annual publication could not afford any legal costs and pulled the article from their website. This led to the Science piece because Lacerda counter claimed that Liberman is attempting to stifle scientific development.

The LVA devices have been bought by 25 local administrations in the UK to assess callers with a view to further investigation for trying to defraud the benefits agencies. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said that a decision will be made in 2010 as to whether to roll it out nationwide. The figures quoted from the London Borough of Harrow are insufficient to judge whether they could have saved just as much if they took a random selection of applicants rather than the ones LVA picked out. There is no comment on whether they considered the effect of the tool on matters of privacy, liberty or legality. Thoughts of the polygraph come to mind.

So, what do have here?

First, a company that wants to keep information to itself so it can make money from it. This in itself is a warning to the sceptical that there may be more to this than meets the eye.

Second, researchers who have tried to assess the device, and written a tactless article. Even if their blunt criticisms are valid, this is not the way to go about influencing people.

Third, a journal that apparently took a legal risk which its editors could have avoided by insisting on a rewording of the disputed article.

Fourth, customers, most notably people in a position of power, who have taken something on the say-so of a sales force without having had the efficacy independently assessed, and apparently with no plan to do an adequate assessment themselves.

My point in writing this piece is not to take any sides in this particular matter since I do not have the full facts, but to ask what they all thought they were doing. Science can provide data, but only when access to it is unconstrained and open to sceptical checking. The reporters of experimental results have a duty to do so in an unemotional and straightforward manner. One part of the task of journal editors is to ensure papers are civilised and clear. And customers who have an opportunity to acquire good data to make a decision that can be supported in public, but do not seem to be doing so, are misusing the data they are collecting. The only gainers in this sorry state are the lawyers.

But everyone could have been better off if they had all been more conscientious. Customers could get better data for a more compelling decision; editors could avoid legal disputes; authors could provide uncontroversial data to make a point; and companies could gain through better co-operation with academia and their users.

I might have shrugged this off as a case of Homo sapiens behaving typically apart from the understanding that there is a chance that every applicant for support from the state may eventually be subject to a dubious attack on their good name by the use of this device.

If we want to attract more to the sciences, then we need to be rigorous throughout. This story is an example of how to get it wrong all the way through, from idea to use.

Friday, 6 February 2009

Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos, the public theology think tank. Denis Alexander is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Together they have published a report on the conflict between evolution and religion and how to resolve it whilst passing it to the newspapers for media attention.

The problem that Theos reveals is this:

Some of the main proponents of evolution associate it with Atheism. Some of the main defenders of Christian belief treat Genesis as a kind of (poor) proto-science making claims about the biological world. There is overwhelming evidence that evolution by natural selection is a fact that explains how life forms have evolved to their present state. So Christians who continue to treat Genesis as a kind of proto-science with God creating humans in their present form look like scientific dunces.

The solution that Theos offer is to offer a way of interpreting natural selection so that it is seen as the work of God rather than something opposed to God. They note that modern biblical scholarship has no place for the biblical literalism of Genesis. Instead, the correct way to read Genesis is as an allegory for something – anything but just don't take it literally. Once Christians stop reading the bible literally and start treating the biological world as God's way of bringing biological diversity into being (p27) there will be no conflict between the science of evolution and religion or so Theos contend. [They skip the issue of why would a benevolent God who cares for each and every one of us use a process that inevitably results in so many living forms going to waste]

To their credit Theos appear to recognise that if God is no longer required to explain the origin of modern life forms then like a naughty child he needs something to keep him occupied. So rather than make him redundant they throw him the role of playing with the cosmological constants. Theos suggests that this is a role on which all theists can agree on.

"All theists believe in "design" in the sense in which they believe in a God who has intentions and purposes for the universe. They also believe that God has "designed" the properties of the universe (by fine tuning the physical constants that underwrite the universe, for example) to facilitate the existence of intelligent life." (P40-41)

Theos are quick to point out that the above view is not the same as Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design attempts to masquerade as a scientific theory and cling to some aspect of the biological world that cannot currently be explained by natural selection such as the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is a tail like structure that functions as to propel bacteria. ID theorists contend that this feature is `irreducibly complex' and cannot be explained via natural selection as arising out of simpler components. They hold that this complexity is indicative of a designer or engineer who must have made the component so it filled this function. IDer's don't say who the designer is: it could be time traveling scientists from the future, alien life forms, or an invisible imperceptible man with a fondness for E. coli and other such bacteria. The main point is that the explanation of such forms are in opposition to explanations via natural selection. However, none of these alternatives to evolution have any positive evidence that entitles them to be treated seriously.

Hence Theos rightly reject ID for the nonsense that it is. ID is not an alternative scientific hypothesis to natural selection because there are no criteria by which it can be tested. Further, such groundless speculation of unknown designers with a love of bacteria does nothing to help us understand how such facets of the natural world arose. Hence, the reason why ID does not appear in science journals is not because of some conspiracy to keep out pro-religious views, but because there are no research programs suggested by ID that would help us to better understand the natural world. In short, ID is not scientific and it has an explanatory value of zero.

The deep irony in all this is that whilst Theos rightly note that the program of ID is explanatory vacuous they fail to see that the "God did it" style of explanation is equally empty of content. Cosmologists pay no heed of such claims as they do not improve our understanding of the universe one iota and with time cosmology will make God's role in the heavens as redundant as Darwin made God's role on earth.

Theos share with IDers a common strategy. Both require some part of the world that has not currently been explained, and both erroneously take the lack of evidence in this area as positive evidence for some alternative form of explanation. Theological statements about the natural world are, like the pronouncements of irreducible complexity, continually in revision and empty of any explanatory value.

At last the conflict between science and religion is clearly revealed – science is continually showing the statements of religion to be empty hand waving gestures that reside in places we do not fully understand. Theos may continue to provide theological commentary on areas of the universe we do not fully understand - whilst the rest of us rightly treat these pronouncements as arrant clap trap for the simple minded.

Given today's survey results showing a quarter of our fellow brits to believe in creationism that seems timely. And I'd be the last to begrudge Terry Pratchett, Kathy Sykes et al, a free drink.

But is it real? Will the PM do anything useful?

Last Tuesday (bear with me, it's relevant) I heard Professor Sir Michael Brady give the Turing Memorial Lecture at the IET. At the end he was asked what government should do to encourage science. After bemoaning the standards of some, unnamed, universities he said: The government should pay physics teachers more. The response, unsurprisingly, was spontaneous applause.

He ought, of course, to have said science not physics but everyone makes mistakes when they ad lib.

To inspire pupils to do science we ought to pay science teachers more than, say, English teachers. We ought to reward students who study science and not, well, certain other less useful things.

The public education campaign is valuable to - though no substitute for money - but Brown should start by following Obama's lead. He should apply science to government policy making. That would set a good example and do good directly.

Humanists4Science

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About Humanists4Science (Hum4Sci)

Humanists4Science (H4S) Mission "To promote, within the humanist community, the application of the scientific method to issues of concern to broader society."

H4S Vision "A world in which important decisions are made by applying the scientific method to evidence rather than according to superstition."

H4S isfor humanists with an active interest in science.We believe that science is a fundamental part of humanism but also that it should be directed to humane and ethical ends. Science is, in our view, more a method than a body of facts.

H4S take a naturalistic view and believe, like 62% of the UK population, that science, the scientific method & other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe.

Since 2008 H4S members have discussed many Humanist-Science topics in our Yahoo Group.

Jim Al-Khalili (BHA President)

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili - 11TH BHA President - On Scientific Method

'I have a rational unshakeable conviction that our universe is understandable, that mysteries are only mysteries because we have yet to figure out, the almost always logical answers. For me there is simply no room, no need, for a supernatural divine being to fill in the gaps in our understanding. We’ll get there, we’ll fill in those gaps with objective scientific truths: [with] answers that aren't subjective, because of cultural or historical whims or personal biases, but because of empirically testable and reproducible truths. We may not get the full picture, we may never get the full picture, but science allows us to get ever closer.’ Jim Al-Khalili, BHA AGM 2013

"A lot of people say science is just one way of looking at the world, at reality, and poets and musicians and, of course, people of faith, have said there are other ways. I don't buy that. For me there is an objective reality that is there and real. For a theoretical physicist who's trained in thinking about quantum mechanics, which involves the idea that by observing something you alter its nature, you have to have some sort of working definitions of reality"Jim Al-Khalili in New Humanist magazine Mar Apr 2013

Lord Taverne

Dick Taverne

Lord Taverne

Science depends on reason and regard for evidence. For me, the scientific approach lies at the heart of humanism as well as atheism. We all accept that science has made us healthier and wealthier. What has been seldom acknowledged or realised is that since the Enlightenment, which it helped to bring about, science has played an essential part in making us more civilised.

Science is the enemy of autocracy because it replaces claims to truth based on authority with those based on evidence and because it depends on the criticism of established ideas. Scientific knowledge is the enemy of dogma and ideologies and makes us more tolerant because it is tentative and provisional and does not deal in certainties. It is the most effective way of learning about the physical world and therefore erodes superstition, ignorance and prejudice, which have been causes of the denial of human rights throughout history. Science is also the enemy of narrow nationalism and tribalism and, like the arts, is one of the activities in this world that is not motivated by greed.

What can compare, for example, with the recent achievement of the Large Hadron Collider, a venture of collaboration by 10,000 scientists and engineers from 113 countries, free from bureaucratic and political interference? Those people put aside all national, political, religious and cultural differences in pursuit of truth and for the one purpose of exploring and understanding the natural world.

Without the contribution of science, which is, in my view, the rock on which atheism and humanism are built, we would be less inclined to be critical, tolerant and understanding and more prone to prejudice, bigotry and tribalism. We would be a less civilised society.

David Papineau on Materialism

'Our world is a fully material world. We don’t need to go outside Physics to understand the constitution of the Universe. Anything non-material would be epiphenomena and could never have any effect on the material world.' David Papineau (video) on Materialism

Richard Dawkins (BHA Vice-President) on Scientific Method

'Scientific method is a system whereby working assumptions may be falsified by recourse to reason and evidence.' (Photo: Chris Street, 2006)

Peter Atkins (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The scientific method is the only reliable method of achieving knowledge. It displaces ignorance without destroying wonder.'

'Science can deal with all the serious questions that have troubled mankind for millennia' Peter Atkins

'My own faith, my scientific faith, is that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and elucidate." Peter Atkins

Stephen Fry (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Reason is almost akin to superstition, ... reason must be tested, testing is the very basis of science.'

Matt Ridley (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it.'

Stephen Law (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Empirical science is possibly the only tool ... for understanding the world around us'.

Lewis Wolpert (BHA Vice President) on Scientific Method

'Science is the best way to understand the world, for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology – from medicine to industry.'

Harry Kroto (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The methods of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the purveyors of mystical philosophies attack, because they recognise in it the chief threat to the belief-based source of their power and financial reward.'